Manifest
by dismaynight
Summary: ..."It's not a town - it's nightmare manifest!" Harley has to help those in need - the promise she made 4 years ago. When Silent Hill mysteriously calls her for medical supplies, how can she resist? / spinoff
1. Prologue

**Title: **Manifest (or Silent Hill: Manifest/Silent Hill 5: Manifest. For the sake of fanfiction, I'm just going to call it Manifest here.)  
**Full Summary: **"It's not a town -- it's _nightmare manifest_!" Harley has to help those in need -- that's the promise she made four years ago. When the quiet town of Slient Hill mysteriously calls her in desperate need of medical supplies, how can she resist? She's the only one able to help at the time. However, her father warned her about the imminent danger lurking in that town -- for once, Harley should have taken his advice.  
**Rating:** T (may change to M later)  
**Linked to: **Silent Hill 4: The Room,  
**Pairing(s): **Henry/Eileen (this is not really a pairing kind of story though. This will attempt to stick with the original SH feel of things, so minimal romance if any.)  
**Disclaimer: **I do not own any part or whole of the Silent Hill series -- it belongs to its own respective owner(s). I only own my original character who is thrust into the world they created.

**A/N:** I've been reading through Silent Hill forums and watching fan-made stuff on YouTube, and a plot bunny struck me, as well as the conversation in this chapter. More chapters coming _very_ soon -- meanwhile, enjoy this teaser of a prologue. :) Reviews much appreciated.  
**A/N: **A lot of the info. up here is subject to change as the story progresses -- I will update this section when time permits, amongst writing and uploading chapters.

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"Why is this such a big deal? Seriously, dad, a town can't hurt a person. Only the town's people can, and they need my help, so they would have no reason to hurt me. …It-- what? What do you mean 'that doesn't matter'? Of course it matters! It's a rundown, cut-off town -- they've run out of hospital supplies and I'm the only one who can help.

"…So what _do_ you mean, then? …wouldn't care? What? What on earth -- … you are being ridiculous, dad. If they need the supplies, why would they hurt me? They'd thank me. … Like I said, a town cannot hurt a person! That's so ridiculous! Only the people can.

"…For crying out loud, do you understand how insane you sound right now? 'Both the town and its people are dangerous'… please!

"Have you ever even been to Silent Hill?

"…What do you mean, 'not technically'? Either you've been, or you haven't. … Then how do you know the town _and_ its people are _dangerous_? … You can't 'just know' something, dad. … No, don't even! Do not say you suddenly don't want to talk about it!

"Ugh, you know what? It doesn't even _matter_! I'm going there no matter what you say! Those people need my help, so I'm going to help them! It's the least I can do…!

"…Dad… c'mon…. I'll be fine, I promise. Okay? I promise.

"If it makes you feel any better, I'll take that pistol you guys gave me last Christmas. _I don't think I'm ever gonna have to use it, but_… I'll take it.

"Okay…. Okay…. Alright, I promise, I promise. … Yeah. I'll call you when I reach the Silent Hill limits, alright? … Okay -- I love you, dad. … Talk to you later.

"…Bye."


	2. The Secrecy That Drives Us

**Disclaimer: **I do not own Silent Hill. Konami does.

**A/N: **This is really fun to write. ^^ Fueled on by L0rdVega's "Let's Play Silent Hill 2/3" videos. I'm not sure I like how my style is in this story, but I definitely like where it's all going. More to come. :D (Reviews appreciated.)

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Henry had always been a quiet, stoic man. If anything was bothering him, it was nearly impossible to tell. If he had had a disturbing life, he never let on; I knew he did, though. I could just tell, from the way he moved and acted about some things, from the way he looked at me, and mom, and our home.

Almost everything I knew about him came from my own observances, and mom told me the rest whenever I chose to ask her. But she also hesitated to talk too much about him and his life, and I could tell that she even left out parts of her own life, keeping secrets without letting on that they were secrets at all. For a long time, I was under the impression that she simply couldn't remember things too well, and it explained why I constantly felt like her stories about her younger self were a little scattered and not-quite complete. Recently, however, I realized that it wasn't her forgetfulness that created holes in her stories -- for that actually wasn't her personality at all; she could remember things that even my young mind seemed to slip over -- but simply that she didn't want those holes filled in. Something about what fit in them just didn't seem like things she could tell me.

To this day, I wonder what secrets my parents could _possibly_ be keeping from me, and why they felt they needed to keep them from me in the first place. We were a family, through and through, and secrets aren't secrets for very long within families -- or so I've come to learn.

When I was on the phone with my dad, it became obvious to me that he was keeping something _big_ from me. Something that I felt in the pit of my guts more so than knew from the logic of my brain. I could make observations about Henry easily -- of course I could, I'd spent my whole life with him -- and from that phone call, I knew that whatever secrets they were keeping from me, at least one of them had to do with Silent Hill; and a big secret, at that.

Now, more than ever, I had to go there.

Not only were the townsfolk in desperate need for medical supplies (during my company's partial-off-season of all times), but I had to know what my parents were keeping from me, and why; and something about the way my dad talked about that town led me to believe that the secrecy was rooted there. I was drawn to that town out of need -- a need to help, and a need to figure things out.

I work for a company called Acadia Supplies Co. They import medical supplies from various warehouses and the workers (me included) deliver them to hospitals and clinics around Toluca County. We were most busy around autumn and winter, when holiday drives seemed to up the number of hospital patients, and during the summer, many of the workers got to take vacations, leaving only a few workers left to keep deliveries going. Summer just didn't seem to be the season for hospital supplies to be in demand, and this year, I was one of three workers left sitting around at Acadia's office center in Ashfield with nothing to do. Very rarely did we get an order to deliver these days.

Wilbur Dawson was one of the three workers in the office with me. He was borderline-chubby with messy brown hair and a loud, barking laugh. He was a logical man, but enjoyed discussions of myth and the unknown -- things he couldn't explain. He debated me and our other co-worker constantly, even though he never won the discussion. Sometimes I thought he wished normal things were unexplainable so much that he would imagine it actually was.

The other co-worker was named Dante Evangelista. He had the faintest of Italian accents and believed in things like witchcraft and supernatural phenomena (mostly ghosts and spirits). He claimed he had pictures of him and his girlfriend where strange white orbs and ghost-like silhouettes appeared in the background, where they hadn't been at the actual location of the photo -- of course, he never showed them to anyone. He was a skinny young man with "pretty-boy" hair of the darkest shade I had ever seen. He was definitely good-looking, but something about the constant look of "I'm-not-as-sane-as-you-think" in his eyes made me glad he already had a girlfriend.

Several long moments after getting off the phone with my dad, I was about to head off for Silent Hill with my loaded delivery truck, pulling on my fur-lined jacket.

"Harley," called Wilbur from the card table he and Dante were sitting at. I turned to him. "You never told us where you were going this time -- in fact, you haven't told us much of anything since you got here." His eyebrow was raised above a calm smirk.

"I haven't?" I replied, faking a small smirk of my own.

Both he and Dante shook their heads. "What's up?" asked Dante, eyes wide. I could tell he suspected something ridiculous, like me having seen a ghost in the storeroom.

"I've just been thinking about things." I buttoned up my jacket with swift fingers. "…I'm delivering to Silent Hill."

Dante looked surprised, a small gasp escaping him. Both Wilbur and I turned to him. "Silent Hill?" he said, low. "I met a guy who said it was an abandoned, haunted town."

"Of course you did," I muttered and turned back to gathering my things from a locker, rolling my eyes subtly.

"Did you really?" said Wilbur, and at Dante's exaggerated nod, continued with, "How do you mean, exactly?"

I turned to look at them over my shoulder to find them engaged in their own little world as I hurriedly stuffed my pistol inside my jacket. I knew they wouldn't trust a young girl like me with such power, and would throw a fit if they saw me taking it.

"There's an eerie fog over the entire town, and people say they've seen figures in the fog." I could almost imagine his wacked-out eyes and Wilbur's deeply interested face. "But I've never met anyone who's gone there and come back alive."

I laughed.

"What?" said both men at the same time.

I turned to face them. "You say you've never met someone who's come back alive -- so I'm assuming you've met someone who came back dead?" I chuckled. "Do you know how weird you sounded?"

"Hmph." Dante scratched the back of his neck and sighed. "Either way, I heard it's haunted. I wouldn't go if I were you."

"Oh, yes you would," I replied, brow raised. "And you know it."

"Well, not alone, I wouldn't. Obviously." He looked dead serious. "You need someone beside you when dealing with spirits, especially angry ones…."

"Oh, I bet there's no ghosts in that town, though," said Wilbur dismissively. "The fog, though -- I'd like to look into that myself."

I sighed. My co-workers were so predictable.

"I would, too. It never goes away, I hear. Ever-present." Dante leaned back in his chair.

"Hey," I said to get their attention. My eyes remained on the duffel bag in my hands, though. "Do either of you have a flashlight? Or a radio? My dad told me to bring those with me."

"Why?" asked Wilbur.

"Heck if I know, but I figured I'd better listen to him this time around." My hand unconsciously ran over where my pistol was.

"Huh. Well, I don't have any of that." Wilbur went back to twiddling his thumbs.

"There might've been one in the desk in the boss's office, but it's locked. Guess you're out of luck, Harley," Dante said tiredly.

"Thanks for the help, guys," I muttered, and with one last mental check for having everything I could get, I walked to the garage. "See you guys soon!" I smiled at them and waved.

"See ya, kid!" Wilbur waved back.

"Bye-bye," said Dante hesitantly. Before I had the door open, he called out, "And Harley -- be careful of that town. I wouldn't trust it."

My brows furrowed, but I decided to let it go. He was only thinking of ghost-safety, anyways. "Alright."

I closed the door behind me and got in my truck, thanking my own luck that it wasn't a huge, hick trucks that I had to drive -- I couldn't stand being called a "trucker" -- but instead, it was more of a van than anything. My co-workers still called it a truck though, always making jokes about being "wussy truckers" since the size of the van was laughable compared to an eighteen-wheeler.

Chuckling, I pulled out of the garage and began my half-a-day drive to Silent Hill.

When I reached the interstate (which was strangely empty today), I pulled out a small notebook that I usually kept reminders in from my jacket.

"Okay," I muttered to myself, opening the cover to the first page. "Wha- What is this?" The first page, which had previously been blank to my knowledge, now had a strange drawing of a man holding… something rectangular and long. "And what on earth is on his head? I don't…" I shook my head and flipped to the second page. I didn't _want_ to know how that drawing got there. "Alright, then…. When I get into town, I need to find the Town Hall, for the Mayor's office, and ask her where to find the hospital…." I looked at the right side of the page. "And dad told me to have a radio and a pocket flashlight on me at all times. …Maybe there's a general store somewhere in that town. There should be -- any normal town would have one." I closed the notebook, and took out the Toluca County map.

"Turn off the interstate onto Nathan Avenue, then left onto Sanford Street. All the way to the Resort Area, and left on Riverside Drive… which looks like it turns into this… Cielo Avenue? Hm. I'm sure I said that wrong. Oh, well! Anyways! Town Hall is on that street. Alright. Nathan, Sanford, Riverside… Ci-e-lo. Right." I tucked the map away under the passenger seat.

There was still a long expanse of road ahead of me. The man I had bought the Toluca County map from back in Ashfield told me that it was half a day's drive to Silent Hill. Whether that meant twelve hours or six, I had no idea. It didn't matter though -- I was going there either way, obviously -- if I had to drop by another town first for food and whatnot, or if I had to stay in Silent Hill for the night, fine.

But oh, the driving was going to be the death of me. Despite the fact that I did it for a living, I was not a fan of driving at all. It just made me tired and irritable, according to Wilbur and Dante. But I'd driven for longer periods of time than this drive to Silent Hill would be.

"You can manage, Harley," I whispered to myself sarcastically.

After five and a half hours of the same, unchanging road, a gas station came up on my right. It seemed normal, except that there were no other vehicles around (which made a little sense, I supposed, since I hadn't seen any vehicles on the interstate either.) Sighing out of relief and stretching out my neck, I pulled into the station and filled up the van.

"I guess I have to pay inside," I muttered after seeing no means of paying at the pump, looking towards the boarded up windows of the small station building. It seemed pretty rundown for a gas station, and I silently hoped it wasn't actually closed. I'd hate to have stolen gas without meaning to.

I placed the gas nozzle back in its holder and walked inside the building through a rust-hinged door. I looked around. It looked better inside, with aisles of various junk food and on-the-road necessities. The clerk was asleep at the counter.

"Um," I said pointedly. He did not stir. "Excuse me, sir." Still, he did not stir. Almost immediately I began to worry -- was he really asleep? Or was he…. "Oh, God." I walked up to him slowly, not sure what to expect. I was almost frightened. I reached my hand out to move him. "Sir…?"

A hand grasped my wrist and I half-screamed, trying to pull away frantically until I noticed it was the clerk's hand that had me.

"What's with all the noise…?" said a voice from his direction. He let go of my hand, moving to hold his head loosely as he stood up straight.

I tried to calm my fast-beating heart. "Sorry…" I said, almost breathlessly. That had really made me jump. "It's just… I kept calling to you and you wouldn't wake up. I thought… um, never mind." He looked at me with a skeptical face. "Sorry," I said again, wondering if he was annoyed with me.

"What are you doing out here, lady?" he said with a hint of suspicion in his tone.

Eyebrows furrowed, I replied with, "I was just filling up… what else would I be doing at a gas station?"

He shook his head, as if to wake himself up a little more. "Oh, right… gas station." He looked down at the cash register. "Sorry -- it's just that I don't get many customers… at all. Maybe -- I don't know -- like, two people a month, at the most. People just don't seem to come this way." He scratched his nose nervously, scanning over the register. "Er -- what pump?"

"Number three…" I said, distracted. "If you have so little customers, why even bother having a gas station?"

"Well, somebody's gotta keep this place up for the few that _do_ need it, you know? Hate for people to get stranded without gas or food… and especially out here, too." Yawning, he handed me a freshly printed receipt.

"What do you mean, 'out here'?" Something about the way he had said it rubbed me the wrong way.

He looked up in slight surprise, leaning against the cigarette counter behind him. "Well, erm… I don't know, really…. People just seem to get all weird about this area. There're all these weird stories about the county."

I shook my head, sighing. As if I needed more ghost stories. "I'd better get going, anyways." I turned to leave. "Take care."

There was no reply behind me. I turned back around, a tad confused.

"You too," he said, after a pregnant moment.

I left for my van, quickly brushing off the conversation. I still couldn't believe that anything would be wrong with that town. All I had were theories and stories, and none of them sounded even remotely believable -- ever-present fog that held strange figures? Haunted? It was just supernatural mumbo-jumbo that Dante always cooked up about almost every town we delivered to, and Wilbur just encouraged him so all hope for convincing Dante out of his ghost obsession would be lost. Anybody could make up stories about a small town to scare a buddy or little sibling -- it didn't mean they were true. And Silent Hill obviously wasn't _abandoned_ -- they called me for supplies, after all.

I had no reason to believe any of it. The town obviously just had a bad reputation for some reason. There's nothing wrong with that, technically.

I pulled out of the gas station. "Hopefully, it's not too far now," I muttered. "That station was the first sign of civilization I've seen… so I _must_ be getting close."

As the road continued, the trees grew denser and the road grew more and more overgrown. It was strange -- I had never heard of an over-grown interstate before.

"Wha-- I can barely even see the road anymore--" I lifted my gaze from the gravel, scowling at the lack of it, and gasped deeply.

There was a man walking across the interstate.

I slammed on the brakes, and the van skidded to a halt mere feet away from where the man was walking. He didn't even flinch, let alone look up to face his near-death experience.

I jumped out of the van, forcefully closing the door behind me.

"What is wrong with you?!" I said loudly. He stopped mid-step. "Why didn't you move out of the way?! I could have killed you, dude! Did you not even see me coming?!"

He turned to me, annoyance clear on his already stern features. "And didn't you see _me _from down the road?"

"Uh…." My brows furrowed deeply.

"There is no mist here, _miss_. Maybe you should invest in glasses," he said, as stern as his face, while tapping his own thin spectacles.

"I don't have the money for that…" I said, quieter than him. "But that doesn't matter -- I was the one driving -- that means _pedestrians_ like _you_ should have waited for me to pass."

He squinted at me. I noticed then he had a briefcase in his right hand. "Don't have the money…" he muttered discriminatively, before rising back to previous clarity and volume. "Hmph. You're heading to Silent Hill… aren't you?" He almost sounded suspicious.

"How did you even know that?" I said, angrily.

"Well, heading there -- at that speed, you would have missed the turnoff anyways. Learn to drive carefully. Especially on _empty interstates_." He sneered at me before walking off into the wall of trees beside the road. "Fool."

"Wait a minute! Where are you going?!" I yelled at him, fists clenched, but he had already disappeared. "_God!_ Tick me off…." I climbed back into the cab and closed the door with more strength than really necessary, before taking off at only half the speed I had been going at before almost killing that man. "Ugh."

Sure enough, the Nathan Ave. sign came up very soon after, peeking out from behind a weeping willow. He had been right. If I had been speeding as fast as I was before running into him, I definitely would have missed it -- which really would have sucked.

I sighed, turning right onto the road to town.

"I suddenly want to get this over with and get home," I whispered, irritated, "to my own bed; my parents, and my own familiar city."

As I continued on, a sign became visible in the distance:

WELCOME TO SILENT HILL


End file.
